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Any Lucía López Belloza had been away from her mother and father and two younger sisters since starting her first semester at a business college near the city of Boston in the late summer. A generous individual gave her airfare so she could fly home to Austin and surprise them for Thanksgiving.

The teenage university student was standing at the departure gate at Logan Airport when she was informed there was an “error” with her travel documents; when she went to customer service, she was restrained and arrested by what she believed to be two federal immigration agents.

“My thought was: ‘I am going to see my parents for Thanksgiving, and now the surprise will be that I won’t be there,’” the student stated.

She was allowed a phone call to her parents, who immediately reached out to a lawyer. A day later, a federal judge granted an injunction barring her deportation from the US for at least 72 hours until her case could be reviewed.

However the next morning, she was chained at her wrists, ankles and waist and forcibly removed to her birth Honduras, a nation which she left at the tender age of seven and of which she has scarcely any memory.

A Volatile Land She Was Deported To

Home to about 11 million people, Honduras is a key transit corridors for narcotics moved from South America to its northern neighbor, and has spent decades struggling against the expanding power of armed gangs that dominate entire neighbourhoods, terrorize families and recruit youths. The nation's homicide rate is three times the world average.

Honduras is also in a political maelstrom, with a knife-edge presidential election of which the vote count has been delayed for days, with local politicians and experts condemning repeated attempts by the US president, Donald Trump, to sway the electoral process.

“It never occurred to me I would experience this tragedy,” said López, who, since being sent away on 22 November, has been residing at her relatives' house in San Pedro Sula, Honduras’s economic hub.

A ‘Blatant Violation’ Says Legal Counsel

Her swift expulsion – under 48 hours after she was detained at the airport – has attracted global attention as one of the clearest cases of reported abuses under Trump’s large-scale removal policy.

“Her case is an unconstitutional nightmare,” said her lawyer, the Boston-based Todd Pomerleau, who has defended other notable ICE detention cases.

“She wasn’t told why she was arrested,” added Pomerleau. “They restrained her like she was a hardened criminal, and then sent to Honduras with no opportunity to have a legal hearing or even consult with an lawyer,” he continued.

“If that isn’t unconstitutional, I don’t know what is,” he said.

Government Response and Legal Disputes

Trump administration officials repeatedly said the primary target of enforcement actions was dangerous criminals, but – like many others detained by ICE agents – López had a clean record. Being undocumented in the US is not a crime but a civil infraction.

A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) representative said López, “an illegal alien”, was taken into custody because she “entered the country in 2014 and an court ordered her removed from the country in 2015, a decade ago. She has remained unlawfully in the country since.”

Her lawyer said that neither she nor he was ever presented with the removal order, and that even if it exists, a federal law stipulates that arrests in such instances can only take place within a 90-day window after the order is finalized – “not a decade after the fact,” argued the lawyer.

“Her mum brought her here because of how terrible the conditions were in Honduras, where gang members were murdering and threatening people … They arrived just like the early settlers 400 years ago, for a brighter future and to find safety,” said the lawyer.

Conditions in the Honduran City

Honduras “faces a significant emigration problem”, said Elizabeth G Kennedy, a Soros justice fellow who researches returned migrants in Central America. In the past decade, about a fifth of Hondurans have left the country, the majority traveling to the US.

In 2014, when López’s family fled Honduras, their city, San Pedro Sula, was considered the murder capital of the globe and their neighbourhood, La Pradera, was one of the most dangerous.

“The children and families that I have spoken with from there reported a overwhelming presence of gangs who compelled multiple families to leave,” said Kennedy.

Organized crime takes a particularly heavy toll on women, having been the main driver of gender-based killings in Honduras last year. Teenage girls are especially vulnerable, making up the largest share of victims of sexual violence.

“And now you have a young woman back in a country where it’s very dangerous to be a young woman, who was given no due process rights in the US,” she stated.

Fighting for Return and Hope

Pomerleau said they are now waiting for an formal response from the American authorities to the judge as to why the emergency order stopping her deportation was not respected.

“It’s possible the government will say: ‘We apologize, we erred here, and we’re going to {bring her back|facilitate her return.’ That would be the sensible and just thing to do.

“But they might have a alternative stance, and that would necessitate me to make a strong legal case that the court order was violated and demand a remedy,” he explained.

“We’re not stopping until we get her back”.

López said she was attempting to keep her mind occupied: “I try to be as positive and as resilient as I can.

“My desire is to be able to move forward and perhaps continue my studies, whether in Honduras or by completing my semester at the college. And eventually, to be able to see my parents and my loved ones again,” she said.

Her university, the institution she was enrolled at in Massachusetts, issued a statement regarding her situation and saying that “the priority remains on assisting the individual and their relatives”.

“My main goal in the US was always to study,” said she. “What happened to me isn’t fair, because we came to learn and strive, to advance in pursuit of that American dream so many of us dream of.”